


Family, Found

by Dribbledscribbles



Category: The Magnus Archives
Genre: Also regarding Basira catching on that more than the usual eldritch crap is afoot here, Gen, I just wanted them to have a nice experience okay Season 5 is going to demolish me, Statement regarding why everyone's mad at Jon all the time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:46:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23231173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dribbledscribbles/pseuds/Dribbledscribbles
Summary: It’s Basira who catches onto it.The collective shift that seems to come over them when heading in or out of the Institute. Not just the oppressive sensation of being observed, their every move catalogued for the voyeuristic cravings of some unseen Eye(s). That feeling remained with them even when they left the Institute these days, but it was always stronger inside its walls. That wasn’t the change. Nor was it the point.The point was: making life worse for Jonathan Sims.
Relationships: Friendship - Relationship, No Romantic Relationship(s), found family - Relationship
Comments: 103
Kudos: 1132





	Family, Found

It’s Basira who catches onto it. 

The collective shift that seems to come over them when heading in or out of the Institute. Not just the oppressive sensation of being observed, their every move catalogued for the voyeuristic cravings of some unseen Eye(s). That feeling remained with them even when they left the Institute these days, but it was always stronger inside its walls. That wasn’t the change. Nor was it the point.

The point was: making life worse for Jonathan Sims. 

Eventually, she will drop that exact line in conversation, and Jon will let out a long, long sigh. Followed by announcing he would make a set of t-shirts that would read I Should Have Killed Jonathan Sims When I Had the Chance in bold letters. Jon will keep one for every day of the week just for himself. Gallows laughter would bubble among them. But that would be later.

Now, Basira is paying attention. Making recordings of her own. Not on a goddamn tape recorder, thanks—she’s still a bit baffled as to why their eldritch horror spying eyeball of a patron has such a yen for vintage tech—but her phone. Jon’s voice gets glitchy in parts, of course, when he’s in a particularly Archival state. She had expected that. 

If all the spooky nonsense going on really was so gauche as to use static to prove just how eerie and otherworldly it was, fine. She could use that as a warning system. A kind of supernatural Geiger counter for her pseudo-boss slash coworker slash unhappy monster-in-the-making.

She wonders if he Knows about it. About the why of it. He never says one way or the other. Regardless, he’s aware that they all have their eyes on him as much as vice versa, following the little intervention they had concerning his sneaking live statements on the sly. There had been a lot of shouting, a lot of anger, a lot of shame, a lot of…everything. Basira had been on edge. Still was.

So, the phone. Just to see how much she could tell with it. She listens to them every night, ears sharp for changes. Jon’s voice breaks up with Archival static now and then. Usually when he unconsciously coughs up a new chunk of Knowledge he hadn’t expected. Sometimes when his voice comes through the door, mid-statement. Up and down, static, no static. Not particularly enlightening. Still, she listens. Waiting for a clue to—something. Jon’s level of humanity versus monstrosity, if she were to explain her motive on paper. 

Elias Bastard, whose name would forever ring as such in her mind should the shady old prick go poking in her head, had dubbed her Detective with a distinct Capital D. Probably mockingly, considering how thoroughly he’d led her around by the nose with his ‘leads.’ But she was a detective, for all that. There is something here she must Detect. Decipher. 

Not an act of archiving, mind, but of action. She had a hunch that the Eye would be just as content with Jon sitting in the Institute all day, having a line of traumatized witnesses fed through his door and getting locked into their own endless nightmares. It was Jon himself who was so prone to rushing around and getting his ass kicked by horrors beyond comprehension. Or vice versa. 

She did not envy Breekon’s fate, whatever he’d been. 

Listening now. Listening.

Basira hit a voice memo that was particularly long, wondering when she’d thought to hover around Jon’s space for three whole hours. But when she hit play, she realized she must have left the recording on by accident. Here were Melanie and Daisy talking. Then herself. The three of them talking about all manner of mess, dread, and complaints about the crap options in the vending machines.

“Bet if you open the Doritos it’ll just be a bunch of human jerky triangles,” from Melanie. Still coming down from the Slaughter’s bullet.

“The soda’s all blood, obviously. At least the V8s are. The rest are all liquid ghosts or something.” That was Daisy.

“Wouldn’t touch the coffee, frankly,” Basira hears herself hum, “I think I saw it trying to climb out of the pot.”

Thin laughter, snorts. 

“The coffee’s fine. Just don’t use the creamer, I’m pretty sure it’s got some of Prentiss’ leftovers swimming in it.” Jon. A pause, a shuffle of a porcelain mug, tea pouring. “That was a joke.”

“Not a good one, considering,” from Melanie. Sharp as knives.

“They did fumigate the whole place, right? Thoroughly?” From Daisy. Softer, but still heavy in a way.

“Y-Yeah. Yes, as far as the tunnels.” More porcelain shuffling. The papery sound of a sugar packet being lifted, then set back down, unopened. “Sorry, that was in poor taste—,”

“You already have your fill with the Kobell statement?” Basira, quick. 

“Yes. The one with the, uh, the snakeskin.”

“Right. Well, if you’ve got some time between meals, I need you to go over some things in the artefacts room with me.” Flat. Tepid. 

“Of course.”

Time rolls by. There’s talk. Jon’s Archival tones are kept to such a minimum there’s almost no static at all. Basira remains so purposefully neutral her voice sounds beige. Inside the last half hour, it’s time to go. Daisy’s voice finds them. Drinks? Drinks.

They—she—had invited Jon along. Not for the first time, either. Basira can’t fault her for that. Out of all of them, monstrous camaraderie aside, she had been served the biggest slice of humble pie concerning Jon’s nature. It’s hard to be brusque to the gangly danger magnet that crawled into the underworld to rescue you. Basira pretends she’s fine with it. She always pretends until she discovers she isn’t pretending. 

Tonight it occurs to her that such has always been the case when Jon is somewhere outside the Institute with them. ‘Somewhere’ is usually a pub and she assumes that the buzz smoothed out her raised hackles around the man. Probably it did something to Jon too, provided he had enough alcohol in him to push past the avatar threshold. Basira remembers a night when Daisy had brought the notion up and challenged Jon to a contest of shots. Jon had, surprisingly, accepted. Melanie had a video of the results to this day:

Their table, surrounded by awed or hooting onlookers, as Daisy and Jon continued to pile the table up with empty shot glasses. Far more than was healthy, far more than any bartender should have allowed for the emaciated pair. But they’d just kept going until they reached the point of inebriation. Basira had finally forced both of them to stop before they could reach the triple-digits, both avatars whining at the timeout. 

“See,” Jon had slurred. “See, this is the type of thing I wish I could’ve done in collage. College.”

“Pfffff,” from Daisy, eyes rolling glassily, “Like you ever drank. You look like a strong apple cider would’ve dropped you before this bogeyman business.”

“Oh, he used to,” Melanie had chimed in. In the video and in her memory, Basira could still see the sheer, gleaming malice in her grin. “Georgie had a lovely story to share about a Sharpie and the term ‘proper diction.’” Jon had looked at her blearily before epiphany crashed through his expression, more incapable of a poker face than ever. A face he had covered with both scarred hands before letting out a groan.

“Et tu, Georgie?” Cue Melanie sitting up with perfectly fake posture and pushing up imaginary glasses.

“Statement of Melanie King, regarding the time Jonathan Sims got wasted on three cheap beers, found a marker, and lost his pants, as related to her by Georgina Barker. Statement begins.”

The statement had gone on for some hours, Jon groaning or cackling along, openly, hot-faced, his eyes so bright Basira almost would’ve thought he was going Archival. A tear had fallen from their corners. Laughing tears. She had been laughing too.

That was then. This is now:

As the noise changes and they exit the Institute—a clear sound of traffic, outside voices, shoes on asphalt—they are talking again. Their voices are uniformly lighter. 

“Oh, shit,” from Melanie. The tapping of a smartphone screen. 

“What is it?” Jon, immediately. Of course. Basira waits for someone to react to the presence of a question mark. Not every question is a Compelling one, but it makes them anxious. But when Melanie responds there’s no room for ire in her elation.

“I’ve just found a pair of boots that mean more to me than oxygen. Look. Look at these masterworks.”

“I can’t tell if those are shoes or just several belts in a pile.”

“They are both and I love them and I will have them. But I refuse to spend my evil income from the evil nerd institute to do it. Jon?”

“Yes?”

“How opposed are you to just Knowing Peter Lukas’ PIN number?”

“Not terribly. Spare a pen?”

“You are going to share with the rest of the class, right?” Daisy breaks in. “I think I suddenly need thirty new designer jackets. Maybe forty. Tailored.” 

“I’d like some penthouses,” Basira hears herself say. “One for each continent.”

Jon laughs.

“Will do. Oh! Ah, Basira, your phone’s about to die.”

“What?” A ruffle of fabric, the sound coming in clearer. “Oh, sh—,”

Recording ends. 

Basira mulls it. What is there to be gleaned from this? They’re crabby in the Institute and cheery outside of it? Not exactly a shock. She may as well dismiss the whole three hours as a waste of digital space and her off-work time.

She should dismiss it. She doesn’t. 

She doesn’t, for the simple fact that she wants to dismiss it. Badly. There is a wordless voice in the back of her mind, telling her there’s nothing here, nothing to see, move along, move along. If it were a real voice, she knows it would sound like her old superiors on the force. 

“Something’s here,” she whispers into her folded hands. And something moves. 

A dot with eight legs creeping along her wall. Suspicion simmers like acid in her chest. The spider watches her watching it. She sleeps on the couch that night.

In the following days, new tape recorders appear. Not Jon’s, not the Eye’s. Cheap handheld things to leave around the Institute in key locations. If some creature snaps them up or destroys them, well, she’ll be out a small wad of cash. But she will still know that they were stolen for a reason.

And, she thinks, that is likely why they don’t go missing. Because whatever agents of inhuman Powers are creeping around those walls would not want such clear confirmation that something was amiss. Let her listen—there was every chance she would find nothing of importance.

So she collects them each night, playing what they’ve gathered for her. Plenty of familiar dialogue aboveground. Fatigue and bitterness from most of them, fatigue and melancholy from Jon. Same old. She does notice how often the former sharpens when Jon appears. The sharper they get, the smaller he becomes; whittling down and away. He stammers more than Basira realized. Never in the middle of a statement, but always in conversation with any of them. More than even Martin ever did. Does. When hearing it in real time, she recalled feeling slightly disgusted by it. Embarrassed of and for the man.

Hearing him now, she thinks of a dog she and Daisy had encountered on an early case. Nothing fancy, just your average bit of domestic violence. But there had been a dog on a chain in the backyard. Half-dead, mostly bones, mottled with scars, a back leg clearly broken. Seeing them, the pup had still wagged his thin cord of a tail. So happy to see them. To see anyone. 

Nausea had turned over in her gut then and now. It redoubles when she hears less frequent voices appear.

Georgie is there. 

“You should probably get some therapy too.”

“Would you go with me as well?”

“…No.”

“Yeah. I thought as much.”

Basira knew already that there was more between Melanie and Georgie than mere friendship, a fact that Georgie could have mentioned, a fact that Jon could have just Known and rationalized into a feasible excuse for their exchange going like…that.

Then she got to a tape with the Distortion on it. ‘Helen,’ quote unquote.

“Not sure. I suppose Helen didn’t have quite the same attachment to him as a project. I’m not quite as much for decades-long campaigns of subtle terror these days.”

“That’s horrible,” from Jon. 

“Is it? We do what we need to do when it comes to feeding, don’t we? Don’t we, Archivist?”

“…Yes.”

“It would be better if you embraced it.”

Fast forward through some talk about Hill Top Road. Then:

“Were you controlled?”

“What a delightful thought. I don’t believe so, no. But the Spider’s strings are subtle, so I suppose it’s not impossible. Why?”

“I, I want to know: Can the Web control another avatar, one that serves another power?”

That laugh. That horrid, headache of a laugh streaming out of that un-woman.

“Make them do things they don’t want to, make them—,”

The laugh is almost a scream. Jon wrenches the last word out like a confession.

“…feed.”

“Oh, perhaps. Perhaps not. Would that make life easier for you? Are you so sure you didn’t want to?”

There’s a last gale of migraine giggles before the door closes and Jon is left breathing, almost hyperventilating in the dark. Somewhere else, one of the Eye’s own recorders clicked off. The interesting bit is over so far as it’s concerned. But Basira’s tape eats up what comes next.

For an hour and change, Jonathan Sims, the Archivist, weeps in the tunnels. The sound echoes in a way it shouldn’t, making a choir of what is trying and failing to be a quiet breakdown, far from anyone who might see or hear or care. Helen’s door does not open again. No monsters come for him. 

This part is wrong somehow. Out of synch in a way she can’t—

She hears the door open behind her. The wall that faces open air, two stories up. 

“That bit was right before Martin tattled on him and got you lot in the door with your big intervention. Sorry for the swap. But you did start planting your little toys around so late in the game, and I doubt you really wanted to hear a couple hours’ worth of nothing in the tunnels. Then there was that nasty business with Hill Top Road and Annabelle’s less-than-uplifting statement and…well. Our Archivist has been having some kind of time, all things considered. Hasn’t he, Detective?”

Basira turns. Helen is there, legs crossed—and crossed and crossed and crossed—sitting on nothing but space, all twists and smiles. The sliver of hallway shown in the new door hurts Basira’s eyes. To pretend it doesn’t, she turns a glare at a different wall. 

“There’s that Detective again. You pick that up from Elias, or is that some legitimate new title the Powers That Be are tossing around? Am I going to have to start,” her face puckers in disgust, “eating mysteries the way Jon eats ghost stories?”

“Not that I know of. Elias…I can’t say why he likes it. Why I like it is, well, the irony. It really has taken you so very long to make two plus two equal four, you know. Still is, by the looks of it.” Helen stretches and shifts like an untangling streamer. One unpleasantly long finger taps her chin. “How is the investigation coming, if I can ask?”

“I’ll answer you if you answer me. Are you an ally?”

“Of whom?”

“Us. The ones who don’t want to see the world go to hell.”

“Oh, Detective, none of us wants that. Though I’m sure the Desolation would be happy to lay claim to such a rallying cry. They’re so terribly desperate to be the meanest ones in the room. Between you and I, I think they’re jealous of the Slaughter. I personally would love to see us all go to the Spiral. Alas, that opportunity came and went. Just a waiting game for me now. So.” Helen’s fingers lace—and lace and lace and lace—under her curling jaw. “How’s the investigation?”

“I think something is affecting us inside the Institute.”

“How very shocking.”

“Besides the Eye, I mean.”

“Oh dear. Am I a suspect?”

“Not sure.”

“Oh. Well, then to make sure you’re sure, allow me to clarify. Yes: I am absolutely a suspect. In fact, I will confess outright. I am guilty.”

“…Of?”

“Exactly what you are guilty of, Detective. What so very, very many of us are complicit in, where dear, destined-to-doom Jon is concerned.” Her smile broadened. Heightened. Coiled. “Making his choices easier.”

“If that’s a joke, it’s not funny.”

“It’s the truth, inasmuch as I can tell it. His choices are simple, Detective. Do this or do that, do X or do Y, eat fresh or eat stale, give in or give out, accept or deny, fight or flight, on and on. You told him so yourself, yes? His choices are either, ‘Be a good pet monster subsisting on a diet of stories gone to dust,’ or, ‘Be a bad pet monster who needs putting down for scaring the locals.’ Ha.”

A warped tittering rises, then peters out just as Basira thinks her brain will boil over from hearing it. Helen sighs.

“Assuming you could manage it. Assuming he is trying very hard not to Know just how easily he could abandon the whole fruitless farce and be done with all of you. Assuming that the one advantage he has in the face of our crimes does not finally break and break him with it. I do believe the odds are even on that.”

“What crimes, Helen? What are we all complicit in, exactly?”

Helen’s lip curls. So much so it looks like a snail pretending to be a frown.

“I am many things, but never exact, Detective. Not for anything. Nor anyone.”

The lip uncurls the other way. A snail facing upwards.

“However, I do have a certain dislike for cheaters. Games are all well and good, but to stack the odds so wholly to one side, well, that’s no game at all. I spoke with the Archivist on this point too. Care to listen?”

Before Basira can say anything, her tape recorder is playing.

“It is astounding the sort of thing you’re willing to choose given an unpleasant enough alternative, isn’t it?”

“How much of our willpower is just safety?” Jon asks. “Comfort by another name. The option to choose and be fine?”

“Hungry, are we?”

“Oh, that’s not—I haven’t done anything—,”

“Yet.”

“I feel like if I don’t—I might die. Fade away into nothing.”

“Do you know that?”

“No. But I can’t die. They need me.”

“Come on, Jon, no excuses. They didn’t need your protection.”

“What, are you going to look after them?”

“And how would I do that?”

“You eat things as well.”

“They have to open the door, Archivist. I can’t just push them in.”

“Oh, you’ve got hands.”

“Sharp enough to pull out worms, kill a few old men, maybe stab an overeager Archivist. But my physicality is as much an illusion as everything else about me. Think of me as a bear trap, not a sword. But we’re not talking about me, are we?”

“When does it stop?”

“What?”

“The guilt. Misery. All the others I’ve met, they’re been cold, cruel. They’ve enjoyed what they do. When does the Eye make me monstrous?”

A static-choked burst of laughter.

“What—why would it ever do that?”

“I don’t…”

“When has your guilt, or your sadness, or your hand-wringing ever actually stopped you from doing what it wants?”

“I-I have not been taking statements—,”

“You’ve sworn off other people’s trauma for now, because you’re caught. Because continuing would endanger you. But other than that, when has your discomfort ever actually stopped you walking the path of the Beholding?”

“I…I don’t know.”

“Even if it were capable of doing so, what possible reason would the Eye have to change how you feel, when it makes no difference to your actions? Helen was like you at first. She felt such guilt over taking people, until one day she realized she wasn’t going to stop doing it. So she chose to stop feeling guilty.”

“Fine. I get it. My feelings mean nothing to it.”

“Not true. They carry a certain flavor, a seasoning.”

“I see.”

“I am enjoying our time together. Well, you know my plight already. Cheerio, Jon. Enjoy your brooding.”

There’s a click as the recording that was never recorded ends. Helen giggles an ache into the spot behind Basira’s eye.

“Ah, but that evidence only incriminates me. What about you, Detective?”

Another click.

Jon: “Disappointed to see me alive? Basira?”

Basira: “…We can deal with it later.”

A pause of quiet understanding.

Click.

“I’d add more if I weren’t already bored of this. The obvious does get so boring so fast.” Helen shrugs and her shoulders don’t stop going up. Once they’re above her head, she gives Basira a hopeful, doubtful look. “You are seeing it, aren’t you?”

“I see what you’re trying to make me see. No one around Jon is fair to Jon. Jon isn’t even fair to Jon, from the sound of it. Is that what this is? An intervention on his behalf? If so, you could go a fair way yourself and stop picking at his brain like an old scab.”

“Aahhhh, so close. I suppose you do need another hint, Detective. Tell me, how would you label his…” Helen waves one hand around in a gesturing spiral that moves like a ribbon in the breeze. “…social circle? Who counts as an ally in his world, if you had to guess?”

Martin comes to mind first. Hopeless sap and even more hopeless sap, pining sadly at each other through the ceilings. Daisy, definitely. Melanie, somewhat. Georgie, to an extent. The background noise that makes up the rest of the Institute’s staff who, rather wisely, keep their distance from the freaky soap opera that seems to live in their basement offices. And herself.

She almost gives the list aloud, but stops. Not least because it’s a stupid thing to dole out your list of friends to a living embodiment of insanity, no matter what goodish terms you’re on with her, but because she has the sudden suspicion that…

“You think whatever people I list, I’ll be wrong.”

“Look at that, she can be sharp. Only, I don’t think it, Detective. I know it. Perhaps not with a Kapital K, but I am far less oblivious than you’ve been made to the reality of things. Tastes like irony, that.”

“I was going to leave you off that list. The Spider too. That why?”

“Yes and no. Believe it or not, Jon has become somewhat of a social butterfly since he walked into the quicksand that’s become his life. Not that he would believe it either. Not yet.”

“You’re talking in circles.”

“And you’re talking in squares. Leave that box, Detective, and consider just who—and what—the Archivist now knows, personally. Even if only through injury, or trauma, or,” another sinus headache of a chuckle, “idle chitchat.”

Basira makes another list. Jane Prentiss. Michael who was not Michael, followed by Helen who was not Helen. Jude Perry. Mike Crew. Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk. Nikola Orsinov. Jared Hopworth. Manuela Dominguez. Annabelle Cane and her company, at varying distance. Yet to actually meet Peter Lukas, just like anyone else who wasn’t Martin. And—insert an internal groan of immense and devastating power—fucking Elias Bastard. Not a single interaction had gone without hurting him in some way, so far as Basira knew. 

“Several of his fellow bogeymen who didn’t much like and/or tried to flat-out murder him.”

“Your partner included.”

“She wasn’t in her right mind.”

“And Jon is? What of the rest of us, ‘bogeymen,’ hmm? From his dancing card, remove the ones who attempted to end him. Who’s left?”

“You, if we’re not counting your previous incarnation.”

Helen hums. The air vibrates with it.

“Michael was in a tough position. He rather liked Jon, but he wanted the Archivist dead for far too human reasons. Revenge for Michael Shelley, which we were not. Revenge upon Gertrude Robinson, which Jon was not. He was merely the Archivist just as she had been the Archivist. The math checked out for me at the time, until it didn’t, and I became myself.”

“Right. That leaves, what? Perry, Crew, the father-daughter Hunting club, the Boneturner, of all things, and Annabelle’s friends on the Web. And, if we absolutely have to count monsters who supposedly don’t want him dead, Elias.”

“Give or take an avatar of The End. But even Jon wasn’t quite aware of that visit, so we’ll not split hairs. The point is,” Helen leveled an endless spear of a finger between Basira’s eyes, “that’s quite a roster of avatars known for leaving no survivors, who let Jon survive. Who let Jon pluck stories out of them, even when it was something uncomfortable. And they let him go on his merry way.”

“Damn. Break out the BFF necklaces.” The words strain on her tongue. She can almost taste the misplaced glibness laced through them. Artificial and wrong. She sees Helen seeing it, the lights coming on in her head, one by one. “But I take your point. Even when he’s being cataclysmically unlucky, he’s also just lucky enough to not piss off all the other horrors in the Avatar Club. The Web’s influence, at a guess.”

At this, Helen breaks into a laughing fit so cacophonous that the edges of the room warp, bowing out like melting wax. 

They snap back again as she giggles, “It truly is amazing, Detective! How hard you’re working not to notice how much you don’t believe what you’re saying.”

Basira opens her mouth to say she doesn’t know what the Distortion is talking about. Only to catch the words at the threshold of her teeth, turn them over, and realize—no. She does know. She knows it the same way she’d known that her impulse to ignore that accidental recording of indoor versus outdoor dialogue amongst their crew had been too quick, too flippant. Everything held the potential for a clue. Leave no detail behind.

That sensation is back again, that all-too-human paranoia chipping frantically at the fog of dismissal in her head.  
And again, she thinks of the beaten dog in that backyard. All bones and scar tissue, thumping its limp tail against the ground.  
Basira gnaws her tongue. Thinks. Scrutinizes the facts with an internal telescope, pushing its lens so close she can see the atoms that make up her suspicions. In a high corner of the room, a cobweb flutters. 

“The monsters Jon’s met. The ones that hurt him, because that’s their gimmick, but let him walk; do you know what they were like with him?”

“What is anyone outside your Institute’s drama like with him, once he lets them start talking, Detective?”

“They…they open up. Maybe annoyed, maybe friendly, but always eager to talk to him. To have an audience. Company.”

“It is nice to be noticed. To feel a perfect monologue all about yourself fall out of you, easy as air, and have someone, or something, listen with rapt attention.” Helen straightens, as much as a thing like her can assume a solid posture, and pantomimes the pose of a flattered girl at a party, lashes batting and curling into ornate coils. “I certainly enjoy our chats. Michael did too. Makes you feel feared and wanted, our Archivist.”

“Right. So there’s the,” Basira dug for a word, “attention aspect. Most avatars so far have been somewhat on the prima donna side. And Jon, for all his throwing or tripping himself into danger, is afraid probably ninety percent of his waking hours. But curiosity and his, his whole Archivist thing, outweighs that enough to go seeking these monsters out.”

“And he’s polite. Don’t grudge him that, Detective. Unhappy as he is about it, the Archivist understands that horror is now part of his dealings with anything other than human. Pain and fear are just new forms of etiquette.”

Helen holds up her hand and ticks off too many fingers.

“He shook Jude Perry’s hand, knowing that the toll of a burn was the cost of leaving her company alive. He was sent on a long, falling ride by Mike Crew, suspecting far worse from the avatar who had pitched a man off a Parisian rooftop into eternity, simply to hear his story. One of Death’s own hands gave him a pass as he regaled Jon in his long sleep. He let the Boneturner reach into him and take away his own ivory in trade for an interview as well as that little anchor for his trip into the Buried. The Spider and all her kin have had their Web wrapped snug as a blanket around him since he was a boy, scuttling secretly around him, coming as close to loving him as a thing like the Spider can love one of her puppets. 

“And then, of course, there is Elias. Nobody’s favorite person at the moment, least of all Jon’s, but…” Helen looks at something, at nothing, at everything. “He is absolutely fond of Jon. Again, so far as we can ascribe such emotion to a thing like him. Not as a person, no, but as a sort of paradox. On the one hand, he loves Jon the way you might love a favorite toy or home appliance. An object that does something useful, entertaining, or both. Less than a person. 

“At the same time, he is positively chomping at the bit for Jon to shed the last of his humanity and dive headfirst into his full avatar potential. Finish the metamorphosis from the same crawling, squirming, flailing grub that the rest of you are, and come out of his cocoon as something Finished and Whole, with all its Eyes on its wings. More than a person.”

“And you? Where are you on this weird, sadomasochistic scale with Jon?”

Helen shrugs. The motion carries her up like a balloon.

“I like him. I like him as he was, as he is, as he will be. He’s fun from all angles. Reminds me of a dog Helen had once. Always eager to see her when she came home, always starved for her attention—any attention after being all alone during her workdays.”

There is another click. Not from a recorder. This one is from deep inside Basira’s head. She raises her eyes to the cobweb in the corner. A small spider is there now. Watching her watch it. Innocuous as anything. 

“Helen.”

“Hmm?”

“It’s been established, pretty vaguely, that the Web can nudge things. Manipulate certain factors to lead to a desired result. Supposedly.”

“Supposedly, yes.”

“But that’s just cause and effect. In her statement, I noticed Annabelle failed to bring up the manipulation of factors other than action, other than free will.”

“Such as she calls it. I rather liked her description.”

“Right. Well.” Basira’s hands flex, wishing she held a gun, wishing she could put a bullet into the corner full of cobwebs and tiny, spying eyes and replace it all with a gaping chasm. “I’ve read statements about the Spider’s less friendly acts. The ones to do with obsession. Mentality.” Her hands flex tight. Three knuckles pop. “Emotion.”

“Aaaand..?”

“Purely hypothetically, if you were a scheming, string-pulling, manipulative, shit-sucking, epitome of living putrescence pretending to cosplay Hannibal Lecter who was working in tandem with another, equally controlling, micro-managing piece of eldritch bullshit, what would you do if you wanted your pet project protégé to give up on his humanity and moral code entirely?”

Helen hums and drums her knife-point fingertips in thought.

“Well, I suppose if I was that, I’d set things up so that my pet project protégé had every reason to feel bitter and abandoned by the only examples of real humanity around him. And if one such example was simply too smitten to have around, I’d make sure he was put far out of reach. In a top office behind a thick door with an isolationist sea captain, if I could.”

“Right. And for those humans left in proximity, I’d make sure they were all from morally grey origins. Violent ones. Caustic ones. The sort who could be easily nudged into having their hackles up all the time. I’d make sure they’d take out that ire on the one part of the horror show that’s trapped them who’s just as stuck as them. The one who screams louder than they do when the monsters attack. The one who never fights back when they…say things. When—,”

“When they play favorites? Blatantly homicidal girlfriend versus mildly creepy bookworm—which is the real monster, folks? Whoever can tell?”

“I get it.”

“Oh, don’t stop now, let’s keep spit-balling! Really get inside the perp’s mind. Would you also make sure the pet project protégé’s ex grew progressively colder to him? Would you make the—the friend,” the word comes out in a warbling snicker that’s like needles in Basira’s ears, “he saved from possession somehow perform just the right mental gymnastics to lay the remaining fury and blame for her situation on his shoulders? For daring to steal her magical rage bullet? Would you? Why would you do a thing like that, Detective?”

“…To make the choice easier. To make the world I want him to join, the one full of avatars and monsters and tasty, human trauma, the more palatable option. Why bother hanging around such thankless, spiteful bastards when you could drop the pretense and join the winning team, right? Most people would in his situation.”

Basira had seen it more than once in her previous line of work. The road from innocent civilian forced into a dangerous position to genuine, willing criminal was a very short walk. Not just in terms of things like drugs or trafficking, either. 

This was how cults worked. They made prey of people who felt isolated in their regular life. No friends, no family, no support network of any kind. Even the ones entrenched in violent dogma and pure insanity could be seductive to someone with nothing to lose.

But.

“But Jon is holding on. He’s still holding on, after all of this. He’s miserable as hell, but he’s still there. Still with us.”

“Yes, he is. Like I said, he has an advantage. One he certainly doesn’t enjoy—but that’s just life for Jon, now, isn’t it? Can’t gain one nice thing without losing ten more.” Helen tilts her head to one side. It keeps tilting until it turns, slowly, winding around on her neck like clock hands. “Have you guessed it yet, Detective?”

Basira sees the dog wagging its tail. She’d found out later that it had still been wagging when the vet had pronounced the neglect, injuries, and diseases in it too much to surmount without hours’ worth of surgery and more of expense. No one had stepped forward. The dog had wagged its tail even as the needle slipped in.

“Detective? Something wrong with your Eyes?”

“He doesn’t,” her voice is sandpaper and glass, “he doesn’t care what we say to him. Or about him. Or, or even what we do to him. He doesn’t care because he doesn’t want to lose us. Because—,” That spider, that fucking Spider, watching with its tiny, smug eyes, “—because he agrees with everything we say. More than agrees. Because he, Jon, he…he hates himself more than anyone else. Even more than the things that want him dead. At a guess.”

“Depressing, isn’t it? Funny too. Behold, Jonathan Sims, unconsciously fighting off the fulfillment and freedom of pure inhumanity and all the forces that urge it…because he’s a great big maudlin ball of self-loathing. Not the best superpower, but it’s what he’s got.”

“What we’ve got,” Basira says, and knows it’s true as she speaks. She can’t be sure, but the spider in the corner looks somewhat put-out. “We’ve been lucky so far because Jon has such a stranglehold on himself. He’s only ever been ashamed when we jump down his throat, never angry. Never menacing. Never pulling an Elias on anyone. Which I’d think would be the ideal next step in the grooming process. Cutting off ties, taking some kind of revenge. Anyone else would have by now. But not him.” 

She looks squarely at the spider. 

“And not just because of self-loathing. Not just because he thinks he has it coming to him. It’s because he’s a good person. A good person who got cornered into a position where all the choices he has are shit, and the only freedom he has is to choose what kind of shit he endures. He deserves better. We all do, but—but it’s got to start with him.”

“For the power of friendship, then? Or for self-preservation?”

“Could be both. Could be neither. Could be I’m just fucking sick of outside forces doing everything they can to make life just that little bit more miserable than it needs to be. Like they’re allergic to people being happy, or even bonding in a situation where they should, by all rights, have doubled down on each other as a support system. And if going full Barney the bloody dinosaur on our hellscape of a workplace makes things even slightly more unpalatable for our voyeurs, I’m down for it.”

Helen’s smile overtakes her face and the mile-long hands clap, their fingers clattering together like carving blades. 

“Lovely! If you do spring for BFF necklaces, I’d like mine in—,” she makes a noise that sounds like a garbage disposal eating your hand feels.

“What?”

“Name of a color that doesn’t exist. If you can’t find that, I’ll settle for rainbow. In the meantime, I think you’re about to be late for work.”

Basira looks at the time. Helen is, somehow, right. The night has come and gone in the space of a conversation. She doesn’t have room in her to be surprised. There’s work to do. She reaches for her phone, then pauses.

“Helen?”

“Yes?”

“I appreciate this. Whatever this really was.”

“But..?”

“I still have no clue what your deal is.”

“Well, neither do I half the time. It’d be rather unfair if you knew more about me than me. But if you do need to know where I stand concerning your merry band and the Archivist, I suppose it is the equal opposite of what other, likewise involved powers feel for you.” Helen lifts one hand. It shudders in and out of being real. “They would see the Archivist subsume Jonathan Sims completely, and the rest of you either discarded or recruited by neighboring patrons. Whichever, whatever.” Helen holds up her other hand. 

For a moment, Basira sees it as only a hand. Small, neat, manicured, just the right amount of bones in just the right places. 

Almost human.

“I would see Jon and your lot as whatever you might or might not be. He could give in. He could not. You could live or die or change along with him. You could not. You all just…do you. Perhaps you’ll win, perhaps you’ll lose. Consider me an interactive audience. I’m just as curious as the Eye to see where this all goes. But only if it isn’t predictable. And if certain busybody Fears just can’t help stacking the deck until all the choices dry up, all the Twists flatten, all the options eliminated under the sheer, crushing weight of futility—well, it’s just dull. You see it all coming.”

Helen’s eyes slide up her face and into the corkscrews of her hair, smiling at the spider.

“Because I do see plenty. And, if there was one thing Michael and Helen had in common, it was a deep dislike of cookie cutter plots. Basic and boring with a capital Yawn. That said.” Basira blinks. Helen is now crushing something between her fingers. A tiny, brownish something with eight legs and no more eyes. The cobweb dangles in broken, gauzy threads. “Is there somewhere you need to be, Detective?”

“Yes, actually. Just let me get my stuff.”

The phone doesn’t leave her hand as she gathers her things. Her thumb taps, texts, and sends. 

Thirty minutes later, they’re all out in the Magnus Institute’s carpark, watching Basira march up to them. She doesn’t miss how Jon takes a wary step back as she approaches. Nor does Daisy, who takes a small step between them. Melanie is too busy rubbing her eyes to get the spots of sunlight out.

“Alright, what’s the deal, Basira? Why are we meeting outside? Not like the recorders can’t pop up out here. Basira?”

She comes to a stop. She looks at Jon. He looks at her, forcing himself to blink; he forgets to now and then. His eyes are an artificial-looking green at the irises, bloodshot, sunk in sleepless, shadowed bags. He looks at her like he’s waiting for something to crack down on his skull.

“Basira, come on,” from Daisy. She’s just a little bit further between Jon and her. Wary. “What’s the big clubhouse meeting about?”

“Us,” Basira says, glancing at her. Back to Jon. “Specifically, it’s about you.”

“Of course,” Jon sighs. “What did I do? I’ve been sticking to nothing but paper statements. Everyone can attest to that. Or is there another death threat for me? A fresh ritual?” Basira says nothing, steeling herself. “…Did you need me to Know something?”

“I do, since you’re offering,” Melanie pipes up. She closer to Jon too now, and it strikes Basira that, if she hadn’t known them, they’d look every bit like brother and sister. Melanie pokes him in the arm, peering up at him. “I know you’re not into solid foods anymore, so you’re officially off the suspect list, but some thieving fucker has been making off with my turkey subs for almost a week now, and my options are either for you to point the bastard out or I start lacing the bread with some very creative seasonings—whoa, whoa, Basira, what’re you—,” 

“Basira, hey—,” from Daisy, not quick enough.

“Basira—?” from Jon, backpedaling, definitely not quick enough.

Just like that, Basira has her arms snapped around him, holding tight. Jon shudders into a statue, so tense she can feel the thin wires of his muscle and the birdlike bones twitch in her hold. It’s like holding a scarecrow. No one’s sure what to do. Jon swallows a lump.

“Um. Basira?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this—I mean, what is this? Exactly?”

“Same question,” from Melanie and Daisy.

“It’s called a hug, Jon. No, there is no needle in you. No, I am not holding a knife or gun. It’s just a hug.”

“Oh. Okay. Yeah. Um.” She doesn’t have to see his face to know he’s looking frantically at Daisy and Melanie, pleading for answers neither of them can give him. After a few long seconds, Jon finally manages to put his own arms around her. He squeezes gently, shakily. Like he’s afraid those sticks could somehow burst her if he holds too tight. “Okay.” It’s a croak. “Can I ask why?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now, we are all out sick.”

“We are?”

“Yeah. Some kind of scary ghost cold’s got us all, wouldn’t want the rest of the Institute to catch it. Peter Lukas sure as hell doesn’t care if he’s less a few people in the building. That’s the alibi, anyway.”

“Oh. For what?”

“You, being kidnapped.”

“What.”

“Everyone else has got a turn, may as well see what all the fuss is about. Come on.” Basira hefts him up and gets a few good paces in before setting him back on his feet. “Alright, carrying you is like holding a bunch of broomsticks wrapped in tweed. You’re walking. Melanie? Can we use your car?”

“To kidnap Jon?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess? Why’re we kidnapping Jon?”

“Consistency. Also for reasons that I’d rather not toss around inside the Institute, even if we are always being watched. Plus, I’ve not had breakfast and I’m quite happy to get day drunk as a substitute. You?” The question is directed to them all, though tipped slightly more toward Jon who looks at her with eyes so owlish they should have been his Archivist stare. They aren’t. 

“Well, yes, I suppose. Honestly, I’d be happy to live in a bottle these days.” Under his breath, “Wish there was such a thing as a statement that carried a buzz.” 

Daisy snorts behind him and swats the back of his shoulder.

“Your luck, you’ll stumble onto a story of some poor bastard who walks into a haunted pub where the beer is made of people, or some damn thing. Let’s get a move on, get you kidnapped properly.” Her hand stays on Jon’s shoulder, holding without gripping. Basira feels a tingle of relief in her chest at the sight. Ditto when Melanie unthinkingly loops her arm through Jon’s elbow, almost as wiry as his, keeping close. Her dour mouth laughs.

“You got a punch card for this sort of thing, yet? Ten abductions and you get a free toaster?”

“At this point, I, I think I’m just going to break down and get a datebook. Have all the avatars call ahead, schedule their pick-up dates. I’ll have the vampires turn up and tell them, ‘Oh, so sorry, I’ve got an appointment with some lovely people who want to fill the underground with snake demons today. I’m free Thursday, though.’” 

Grim chuckles teetering on the side of real humor, the closer they get to the car. Basira doesn’t need a recording to catch the change this time.

“Nah,” Daisy huffs, getting the door. “You’re too in demand. Better to make it one of those little ticket dispensers. Get a line of monsters just hovering in the lobby waiting for their turn.” Jon groans at this, Melanie laughs, and Basira snorts. Before Jon climbs in, he turns to her.

“Hey, can we try to get Martin in on this? He’s never kidnapped me either. If, if this is just a one-day thing…”

“It is. I don’t think Lukas will let that much slide. But,” she says, before Jon wilts completely, “he’s also going to be part of this. Definitely won’t be happy with the audio evidence I sent him, but that’s rather the point.” Basira looks at Daisy and Melanie in what she hopes is the right balance between apology and affirmation. “I expect we’ll all be getting an earful from him pretty soon. Ideally, I’d like Georgie to be there too. If you can convince her to come around, Melanie.”

“Wait, audio evidence of what?” 

“Did you catch something on tape?” 

“Why would Martin be mad at us? He’s Martin.”

“Long story. I’ll not go through it sober if I can. Jon, quit stalling and get kidnapped. In.”

Jon gets in. They go.

They find the earliest restaurant open, sit down, and don’t eat as Basira lays it all out. It’s Jon who protests the most, covering for all of them. Trauma and a more-than-toxic workplace environment and his own less than shining record all tumble out of him in a flimsy verbal shield. 

Basira waits for him to finish before she plays the audio, more grateful than she’d admit that Helen decided to leave even the impossible recordings where she’d left them. Between this and their distance from the Institute, Jon goes very quiet and the people around him—Georgie included, after much pressing from Melanie—go very pale. 

Before the uncomfortable hush at the table can grow too big, heavy footsteps come plodding up. Jon immediately perks up from the awkward hunch he’s been folding himself into. 

“Martin?”

It is Martin, his own eyes bloodshot and their paint-water color somehow greyer than usual. But the dullness there seems to be rapidly burning off as he strangles his phone in one hand and yanks up a chair with the other. He sits down quickly, as if forcing himself through an action he doesn’t want to do, but knows needs doing. Or perhaps it’s the reverse. Either way, he puts himself firmly between Jon and Basira, sets his phone on the table, and folds his large hands together so tightly they shake. His smile is brittle as glass.

“Jon. Hi. Everyone?” He sucks in a long breath through his nose. Jon can’t look away from him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

Basira doesn’t blink.

“How’d you get away from Lukas?”

“Took a vacation day. He tried to spin something about suddenly really needing my help today. I told him I really needed to tell a number of people what utter pricks they were and that I didn’t want to see their faces again afterwards. He knew I was telling the truth. So here I am. You utter pricks.”

Jon is still looking at him. 

“M-Martin, it’s not like that, it’s not their fault. They didn’t—,”

Martin finally looks at him. Basira doesn’t have to be a Detective to know he’s been fighting the urge to look since he walked in the door. Now it’s like Martin’s eyes are glued to him. Normally she’d recoil at the pure sap oozing out of the pair, but not today. Not now. Not even when Martin’s hand leaps eagerly to Jon’s shoulder. 

“Jon, do not. Do not defend them or your own masochistic little voice telling you that you deserve one more ounce of crap on your plate, alright? Just don’t.”

“Exactly what I was going to say,” Basira says. “We need to talk.”

So they talk through it all. Connecting the dots, simultaneously uncomfortable and tired and fed up. There are curses, sounds of disgust, and, ultimately, a general choir of apology. Jon looks like a man who’s been thrust onstage to accept an award he’s never heard of from people speaking an alien language. He seems to actually be compressing himself in his chair, heat coming off his face as he tries to duck out of the attention. 

He drops the line about the t-shirts in defense. Most laugh. Martin doesn’t. Instead, he clamps around Jon in an embrace. Jon shudders—then immediately grips him back. 

Melanie makes a loud retching noise. Then elbows Martin to one side and squirms her own hug in. Georgie follows suit. Daisy. Then Basira. Jon’s face is a furnace by now, his eyes liquid-bright. Both knowing and Knowing that this moment is real.

Then he wheezes, “This is all very nice, but I’d like to keep my remaining ribs intact.”

“Shhh,” from Georgie. “This is just what bonding feels like.”

“Can bonding feel more like whiskey?”

“If you’re a lightweight, yeah,” says Daisy. But she finally peels herself out of the pile and knocks back her lukewarm drink in one go. “Come on. All this sincerity’s making my teeth ache. Another round?" Agreement rises from them in a murmur as they all break off from Jon, Martin last and longest. Basira’s certain she could fry an egg on Jon’s cheek by then. 

They haunt the table for hours after that, talking, laughing. After, they hit the shops. A small herd of friends migrating down the blocks, taking their pleasant noise with them everywhere they go. It’s Daisy who hunts the shirts down, in the end. Strange, edgy-to-nonsensical slogan tees meant for the college and younger crowd.

Some they try on for a laugh, some for keeps. Jon has to be given more than one look from everyone before he grudgingly puts back one that reads Home Sweet Home above a graphic of a garbage can. Eventually they walk out with at least one shirt apiece. 

Georgie’s features the phrase, Life is Finite and Meaningless! in cheery Barbie font. Melanie’s is simply a hammer and sickle done in hot pink glitter. Daisy’s is a wolf howling in angry wingdings, the text reading Call of the Swearwolf. Martin gets one that shows an illustration of a 1950’s housewife holding a steak knife, grinning manically at the viewer, a cursive font reading, I Am This Close, Swear to God. Jon’s shows a print of Pandora opening her evil vase, the text reading, aptly enough, Can and Will F*ck Around and Find Out. 

Basira walks out with two. One for her, featuring a cascade of daisies. The other she brings back to the Institute’s tunnels, leaves it in its bag outside the door that shouldn’t be there, knocks, and leaves. The woman who is not a woman opens the door and reads the note left on the parcel: Couldn’t find it in rainbow.

When she takes the shirt out, she laughs, and every spider in every wall of the Institute cringes under the reverberation. 

She had not been lying. She did not care what the Archivist and his friends became or ceased to be. They were an entertaining show, these funny, fretting people. Whatever looming destiny was coming for Jon would no doubt be outstandingly amusing.

But he really was growing far too glum for her liking. It was no fun if that was his default state. He couldn’t even muster up a little Edwardian huffiness for her anymore. He was just sad in every version of the word. 

So, for the good of the Distortion’s amusement, the Eye’s cooped up agent and the Spider’s silk would just have to take this loss. A small thing, really, but for those Powers who are so very complacent in their endless stream of things going According to Plan, well. 

She imagines the new lovefest is rather nauseating. 

That sets her laughing again as she pulls the t-shirt on over her permanently-affixed realtor’s blazer. The woodcut Cheshire Cat illustration is adjusted until it can walk and talk and laugh on the cotton. She makes a note to blackmail the Archivist into giving her her own cozy little embrace, knife hands or no, before she offers anything in the way of doors or advice the next time he slinks down to see her.

Aboveground, there are still Eyes, Spiders, and Loneliness. But now the Eyes squint, the Webs have lost half their threads, and the Lonely finds that, in the space of a day, its fog can now barely touch its would-be avatar. 

The Archivist Knows this, knows his friends, and smiles.


End file.
